High School

Palladino: Confusion will rule in new NVL divisions By Joe PalladinoRepublican-American

Oxford High, welcome to the Naugatuck Valley League. Let confusion reign. The Wolverines join the NVL starting in the fall of 2014, which means the league operates per usual for one more complete season. Then, it's chaos.

The hows and whys of NVL scheduling and divisional formats is largely complete. Here is a look at how it impacts your sport.

As you can see here, and in the accompanying chart, the NVL is now carved into three five-school divisions:

Division A: Ansonia, Derby, Oxford, St. Paul, Seymour.

Division B: Crosby, Holy Cross, Kennedy, Sacred Heart, Wilby.

Division C: Naugatuck, Torrington, Watertown, Wolcott, Woodland.

For 20-game sports this allows for tidy scheduling: Two games against divisional opponents, one game against all other NVL schools, plus two out-of-league games.

This three-division set up is used for these sports: baseball, softball, boys and girls basketball, volleyball, boys soccer, football, and boys and girls cross country and track, both indoor and outdoor.

After that, we plunge into the abyss.

The three-division plan is dismantled for tennis, swimming, girls soccer and golf. Why? Because many schools in Division A, but also others, like Sacred Heart and Wolcott, do not compete in all sports. If a division has less that four schools, then the remaining schools in that division must compete somewhere other than their "home" base.

There are NVL coaches right now who have no idea in which division they compete. By the fall of 2014, we will all carry divisional cheat sheets. NVL Divisions For Dummies will be on bookstore shelves and available for download soon.

And then there is football. There has been a call in recent years to do away with the league championship game. However you stand on that issue, unless someone steps forward with a brilliant plan, the title game is gone. We will have three football champions in the NVL, one from each division. How we resolve ties in the event of a everyone being 2-2 is a story for another day.

It seems inconceivable to me that we shall have a league championship game, meet, or tournament in every sport, save one, football. There are many issues still to be addressed, but make no mistake, the most critical may be this: division names.

No one yet knows how teams will qualify for league championship tournaments — division winners and next five best records? Top two in each division, and two wild cards? Top eight won-lost records, period? — but the naming of divisions is hugely important.

If the NVL trots out three new divisional names, and then re-names all the divisions in the two-division structure, it will be crazy keeping track of titles: Let's see, we won the Copper in volleyball, the Smith in swimming and the Jones in golf.

Oh, the humanity.

The league currently uses two divisions, called Brass and Copper. The third could be tin, or zinc, or pewter. If we went away from metallurgy, we could easily fudge southern, city and northern divisions, for example.

For the two-division sports, Brian Fell, Woodland Regional athletic director and the NVL scheduling guru, suggests distinctive names. For example, the two golf divisions could be named the Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus divisions, or perhaps, be named after long-time NVL coaches or administrators. An example might be naming one golf division after the late Ansonia golf coach, Jack Hunt.

We already have swimming awards named after men like Manherz, Reardon and Farrar, but there are other names and other great coaches. Snyder comes to mind in swimming.

The possibilities are endless, too endless actually.

Do you have an idea? Let's hear it, or tell your athletic director. Nothing is carved in brass or copper yet. The new NVL is a work in progress, and that's a good thing.

The league is more than 80 years old. It has never stood still, and likely never will. There has long been talk that some school districts might merge, and that will have a major impact on the league. There is a new Waterbury vocational school coming on line. Will they offer athletics and apply for admission to the league?

The NVL may have to tear it up and start all over again, and again, and again.

Yes, bringing in Oxford creates headaches, but this is what the Valley league is all about, offering athletic opportunity to Valley kids. Somehow, this will work.

" for nvl football - one seven team division and one eight team division. each team plays six teams in its division and four teams from the other division. both division winners meet for championship. "

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